Following the recent reacquisition of the village of Robotyne, Ukraine finds itself again in contention with Russia, this time in a legal arena, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Kyiv accuses Moscow of exploiting genocide laws as false justification for their invasion. The response from Russia is a denial of these allegations, asserting they were intervening to impede a genocidal attack threatening ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s east.
The scheduled court hearing in The Hague won’t discuss the legality of the much-disputed Russian invasion. Instead, the focus will be on the permissibility of the ICJ to scrutinize Ukraine’s allegations.
The viewpoint from Ukraine negates the danger of potential genocide in the country’s east, an area where Russian-incited forces have been combated since 2014. Furthermore, it argues that the genocide treaty does not permit an invasion, even to abate an alleged genocide.
Russia, for its part, dismisses Ukraine’s case as “hopelessly flawed,” implying that Kyiv’s actual objective is to get a verdict on Russia’s military movements’ morality.
In an unexpected twist, immediately after Russia invaded on 24 February of the previous year, Ukraine lodged the case. When in mid-March – the International Court of Justice (ICJ), United Nations’ supreme court, commanded Russia to halt its military movements in Ukraine, Russia outrightly dismissed this instruction, contesting the court’s jurisdiction and discrediting Ukraine’s application as inadmissible.
In a recent Monday court session, Russia’s legal spokesperson, Gennady Kuzmin, stated that Ukraine’s insistence that no genocide occurred implies that United Nation’s Genocide Convention was not violated. He proposed this as a reason to discard the case.
Over the pending round of hearings, scheduled until 27 September, the court will entertain submissions from an additional 32 nations. All of these nations support Ukraine’s argument for the court’s apt jurisdiction to manage the case.
Returning to the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as crimes committed with a deliberate intent to destroy, whole or partially, any national, ethnical, racial, or religious group in terms. Despite this delineation, Russian officials persist in accusing Ukraine of executing genocide.
Adding to the precarious balance, Ukraine has initiated a separate case against Russia dating back to 2017. The charges include the illegal annexation of Crimea and the illicit funding of separatist rebels. This landmark action, filed under UN anti-terrorism and anti-discrimination conventions, continues to be an open document.
